Originally Published EMDM
September 2004
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
Don’t Stop Thinking about Tomorrow
If R&D is the lifeblood of the med-tech industry, Europe is looking relatively anaemic. On average, US companies invest almost 13% of their revenue in R&D, according to Eucomed. Industry in Europe invests less than half that amount. Europe is falling behind not just the United States but also Japan in the development of new medical technologies. This is no way to build for the future.
There are a number of historical, cultural, and legislative reasons for the widening gap between Europe and the United States. For Nathan Rosenberg, professor of economics at Stanford University in California and a leading authority on technological change, the university-industry nexus is one cause.
The United States leads Europe when it comes to spending money on university-based R&D. Much of that money is going into life science. “In 2001,” Rosenberg told a reporter from the Financial Times, “nearly 60% of the $32.7 billion spent by universities on R&D went to life science, including medicine and biotechnology.” Europe has not done enough to make its universities link up with the business world, he says.
Eucomed partly blames Europe’s risk-averse business culture for the innovation gap. US firms are geared more to taking a business risk, and venture capital is more forthcoming, according to the association. The failure of a project or product is not necessarily considered to be a mortal sin, as it is in Europe. That puts small to medium-size companies in a real bind. SMEs often are in the vanguard of innovation, yet they face enormous odds in their struggle to survive.
In areas of high innovation, writes Eucomed in its annual report, the initiative is often seized by small start-up or university spin-off companies. Unfortunately, some governments fail to recognize their contribution, and worse, create legislative and financial obstacles that hinder rather than encourage innovation.
Joachim Schmitt, director general of German trade association BVMed, raised the issue in an open letter he drafted in January. “We need an innovation-friendly climate,” he wrote, “which we lack at the moment. More and more obstacles to innovation in Germany [have led to] decreased investment in R&D.” Schmitt claims that R&D investment has dropped from approximately 10 to 7% of turnover among German member companies. It’s no coincidence that Schmitt drafted the letter around the time that the German government proclaimed 2004 the Year of Technology. Snickering aside, German industry as a whole still outpaces its counterparts in other EU member states. Italian companies invest about 5% of turnover in R&D, while French firms spend between 3 and 5%, according to Eucomed.
Brian Griffin, one of the keynote speakers at this year’s MEDTEC Ireland, will touch on some of the financial, legislative, and technological hurdles faced by device developers. But mostly he will focus on more-uplifting R&D trends. Griffin is a cardiologist who holds the vice chairmanship of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic (Ohio) in the United States. His thesis is that devices represent the new frontier in cardiovascular disease treatment.
Drugs have contributed to a dramatic reduction in cardiovascular mortality over the past decades. However, few if any new classes of drug therapy have been released in the past 10 years, maintains Griffin. Device technology, on the other hand, has continued to make great strides. An implantable heart and the nonsurgical treatment of cardiovascular disorders appear increasingly feasible, he notes. In his address, Griffin will discuss how industry and practitioners can work together to clear obstacles and put these innovations on the fast track for patients who need them.
His keynote speech prefaces a daylong session devoted to R&D on 30 September. For a complete conference schedule and capsule summaries of some of the sessions, turn to the MEDTEC Ireland section starting on page 40.
And if you are in the mood to continue this discussion, and perhaps solve some of the world’s other lingering problems, let’s get together over a pint in Galway.
Norbert Sparrow
Copyright ©2003 European Medical Device Manufacturer
